What is this? This isn’t a game. This freaking bastard is torturing a girl. Can’t I do something, anything? The absence of visuals cleared his thinking, but not by much. I want to save her. My intelligence, what good it's for. No, I can save her.

He chose to open his eyes to observe the surroundings. Trying his hardest to not look at the insanity going in front and he soon spotted something peculiar. A pool of water, it was like a tank. Why is it here? The pole Xahi was hanging from went along the ceiling, above the pool. He found his answer when Hugo approached it, leaving the weeping girl hanging all by herself.

"Just 15 more minutes and you will be free to go," he said, dipping his hand into the water and speaking in clear words, "Phoenix's Rage."

Bubbling sounds stirred the hollows of the cavern. In mere moments, small bubbles turned into marble-sized and water started gargling up with vapors, "See, it didn't even take time to boil the water."

Trino paled at the sight when he speculated what Hugo was about to do.

"You just need to be in there for a minute. It will loosen your skin. Afterward, skinning will be just like stripping off clothes." He wasn't joking, she wouldn't die from it, but it would hurt like hell. In only a month she would grow new skin. It was a natural process for Chronos to shed skin, but they didn't do it as a whole and shed it like dandruff. Each Chrono had their timing during which they shed pieces of their skin. The most important fact of all, it wasn’t painful in the least.

Trino couldn't take any more of Hugo's insanity. It sent a distress signal to his attendants in the hospital without his notice. He had already tried his all but couldn’t break those shackles tying him to witness the atrocity unfolding in front of him.

On the other hand, Xahi’s voice died down. The miserable girl was hyperventilating from the shock and fear in anticipation of being dipped into boiling water.

"Now we just need to remove the remaining clothes. They will spoil your skin and could merge with it, ruining it completely," Hugo said and reached out his hands for what seemed to be her bra. There was no lust in his eyes, only greed.

"Mo… you fu.f..in rhonster," Trino's desperation made him conjure a mana ball in his palm. Finally, he could do something. It shot and hit the beastmaster's hand, flicking it away from her. But throwing pure mana was akin to throwing raw gunpowder. It did nothing more than what it just did. That was to snap Hugo’s hand away as somebody slapped it away. That at the expense of his whole reservoir of mana. No sane mage in their right mind would throw tangible mana at someone. No one.

"I will torture you to death if you interfere anymore." Hugo declared, glaring at the boy. Grasping the boy’s state, he thought to himself, Am I not already doing it?

Shrugging, he continued his action. Xahi looked at the guy who was trying his all to conjure another mana ball but couldn't. There was humiliation filling her mind, but it was no way near the fear bordering her mind's capacity, threatening to break it. Both of them closed their eyes in helplessness. Wriggling and struggling hard to break out from their nightmare, or rather to break the nightmare.

All hope left Xahi when she felt Hugo’s hand on her skin, below her underarm, grabbing onto one of the strands of the clothing wrapping her chest.

At that moment, something snapped.

Trino heard a flopping sound, while Xahi felt it when she hit the ground. She went silent, and Hugo stopped talking too. Trino opened his eyes just to stretch them wide in shock at the sight.

Trino saw her, the sylphlike girl holding her knees and sitting in a perfect concave-dent formed in the ground which wasn’t present before. The girl had pale skin white as snow, fading into transparency around her limbs and head. It let her purple arteries and green veins visible through her skin. There were no clothes left on her body, and Xahi was weeping in shock at the plight she had been in just a moment ago.

Apart from the doll-like figure, Hugo's half hand was also there at the end of the dent's perimeter. But Trino couldn't tear his eyes off of her, wanting to go and console her. It had been hurtful to see her cry, beg, and despair this whole time, and the feeling still persisted.

Just like Xahi, he too ignored what happened to Hugo or why his half severed hand only remained beside the dent the girl was sitting in.

There wasn’t even dust left of the beastmaster or of anything else in around a meter of Xahi. Even her undergarments were missing. The table beside her was missing a portion too, and the metal pole she was hanging from was no more a pole. It was as though an explosion swallowed everything, and its center had been where Xahi was hanging. The only external substance was Hugo’s blood from his hand. It was trickling down the slope, much like an oil stream. Everything else was gobbled up by an illusory sphere of which only emptiness remained.

The wetness she felt down there broke her senselessness, and Xahi looked at the guy. Both of their eyes met, and Trino closed his shut, making Xahi conscious of her nakedness. Now that the crisis was over, fear left home, emptying it for embarrassment and humiliation to return. She had tacitly accepted the fact that she had been saved, so did Trino

Forgetting to cry, Xahi threw her gaze around the cavern to find some clothes, any clothes. The robe she was wearing earlier was in tatters. She spotted a bench covered in shabby white cloth with stains. She didn't think twice. Reaching to it, she garbed herself in it.

Her breathing had yet to calm, but she didn’t stop to wait for it. The Chrono started approaching the human. Trino was still keeping his eyes closed, not daring to open them for fear he would make her feel insecure. Which was absurd as he was the one fully tied.

Xahi was hesitating to go near him. He was of the same race as Hugo. But then the self-harm he had inflicted upon himself just to save her gave her courage to approach him. The boy’s wrists were bleeding and the ankles too. She was obliged to at least untie the guy.

When she reached him, he finally opened his eyes. Upon a comparative look, Trino was in a more miserable state than her. Obviously physically. Nonetheless, the incident would be a trauma of their life.

Xahi racicated...